ABSTRACT
The Dutch gave Charles II two lee-board yachts at the Restoration but English builders promptly designed proper keeled yachts, in two of which Charles and his brother James raced between Greenwich and Gravesend for £100 in 1661. This was the first such race recorded in English waters. The first club was founded at Cork in 1720; the Cumberland Fleet or Sailing Society, later the Royal Thames Yacht Club, in 1775; the Yacht Racing Assoc. in 1875. Many different types of yacht were designed and discarded up to 1939 but after WWII designs suitable for mass production came onto the market and small boat racing became a growth industry not only in salt waters but in reservoirs, rivers and flooded gravel pits.
